Slackjaw

Every Man For Himself,
And--

by Jim Knipfel

On
Saturday, the first real day of my first real vacation since Id
started answering phones for a living, Bill Burroughs kicked. Myself,
Im still convinced that he died five or six years ago, and his
secretary, Mr. Grauerholz, has been pillaging his old manuscripts ever
since, trying to get two or three more books out before the news broke.

Thats neither
here nor there, though. Breaking the news now allowed me to put it down
to the book curse. First two uncles die, my dad and niece get sick,
now a man wed been hoping to line up to write a blurb has a fatal
heart attack. It just makes sense.

Id
taken my allotted two weeks with one thing in mind. I wasnt going
anywhere, because I couldnt afford it, and I didnt like
traveling much anyway. No, I was going to take these two weeks, lock
myself in the apartment, and write my damn book. My only worry, really,
was the cabin fever. Leave me alone in the apartment too long, and things
get creepy. I might just end up sitting on the floor, staring at my
feet, unable to do anything. A few days later, I'd eat the cats. That
wouldnt do me any good at all.

"What happens
if you dont finish it?" a fellow at work asked when I told
him my plans.

"I will,"
I told him. Not finishing wasnt an option, even though I was taking
off, pretty much, sort of, from a standing start. I mean, Id been
doing some writing towards this end for a few weekends, but they were
just scraps and notions. Besides, it was early August, and the professional
football season started in a month. I couldn't afford to try and write
a book and follow the Packers at the same time. I had to get it out
of the way.

After sitting in
front of the machine all day Saturday, I found I couldnt sleep.
I was all keyed up, the adrenaline still coursing through my veins.
That hadnt happened in years. Id made it through the day,
Id gotten some work done, Id get some more done the next
day. Everything was going to be just...fine.

It wasnt until
Sunday afternoon that I started to go mad. Way I figured it, it would
take me at least three or four days to reach that point. But there I
was, at three oclock, pacing from one end of the apartment to
the other, listening to instructional audiotapes. Im proud to
say that I can now find my G-Spot in the blink of an eye.

After a few hours
of that, I sat down in front of the television and watched an instructional
videotape which showed me how to talk to my children about the dangers
of drinking. Given that the tape was put out by the fine folks at Anheuser-Busch,
their warnings werent all that frightful, which made me feel better.
"Yes, alcohol is a drug," a mother tells her young daughter
in one scene, "just like aspirin and vitamins are drugs."

That night, in celebration
of a day well-spent, I drank myself unconscious, just to make sure I
got the sleep (and the proper nourishment) my body required.

The next morning,
after two days of flopping about, I finally set up a regimen. Id
get up at seven, put myself together, then take a stroll around the
neighborhood to clear my head and get the blood flowing. I knew I wouldnt
be moving much for the rest of the day, that Id be spending most
the rest of the day sitting cross-legged, so it was best to move myself
around at least a little bit. Once I got back home, Id sit down
at the machine and work until I finished what I needed to finish that
day.

Everything seemed
to be churning along at a nice clip. I felt strong, I felt clean, I
was pounding through a chapter a day. I was like a fucking locomotive.
Or maybe, as the Spanish would call it, a loco-motive.

Early the next morning,
however, not long after I sat down, things began to change. A construction
crew showed up and started sandblasting the building next door. They
skipped the first two floors completely, and dragged their scaffolding
up to the third, right next to my open window. They knew I was there.
Thats why they did it. I wasnt aware of any of this until
I heard the strange hissing and crunch in the next room.

I stood up and went
over to take a look, only realizing then that they had been blasting
straight through my window, spraying brownstone dust all over my bed
and my (extremely) rare readers edition of Mason & Dixon.

"Well, shit."
I slammed my windows shut, and cleaned up as bests I could, then
went back to work.

After things had
been quiet outside for a couple hours, I decided to take another little
stroll. It was a nice day, and Id finished what I needed to. Unfortunately,
after putting my shoes on and tromping downstairs, I found that the
construction crew had, somehow, commandeered the front steps of my building,
swathing them in layer upon layer of impenetrable plastic, which hung
in great sheets from the front door. I was trapped.

Irony abounds, as
the great Arthur Bremer said. Here I was, a man who usually hated going
outside, deciding to do just that, then being prevented from doing so.
Not knowing what else to do, I turned around and went back upstairs.

Late that night,
I sat in the darkness at the kitchen table with a pack of cigarettes
and a bottle of Jim Beam, a thunderstorm raging outside. I wasnt
thinking about much of anything. Then I noticed something strange. It
was completely black in the kitchenat least to meyet suddenly
I was catching what seemed to be glimmers of light out of the corner
of my eye.

My mind started
racing around cornerscould it be some peripheral light perception
coming back? Was I, this very instant, on the road to recovery? Was
my blind man schtick history? Or, more likely, could it be my retinas
simply tearing themselves apart for good?

I looked around,
waiting for the next flash. It took me a few minutes to realize that
all I was seeing was lightning flashing through the window.

The next mornings
reverie turned into a nightmare. Normally, I strolled past Henry Millers
old place, hoping for a little spiritual guidance. But that morning
I walked west, towards the Gawanus, and before I realized it, every
sidewalk, every corner, became a major construction site, a frightening
combination of broken concrete, exposed pipes and rumbling machinery.
I was so deep into before realizing that it wouldnt end that turning
back wouldve been just as bad as forging onwards.

It all seemed too
metaphorical though, just one more blast of Jims Cheap Symbolism,
so I ducked behind a dumptruck, into the street, around the corner and
down a few blocks, hoping no cars would decide to pick me off as I trotted
along, and went back home, feeling the first, quiet naggings of a strange
sadness tugging at me.

I awoke the next
morning with the light through the window burning my eyes, the depression
burning everything else. I didnt know where it was coming from,
and I had too much work to do to let it take over. Not yet at least.
I only had two chapters to go. Granted, the one directly ahead of me
was the biggest in the book, but I refused to think about that.

When I sat down
in front of the machine, things lifted some. They always did when I
was working. Everything else always fell away, even the news that my
niece had developed appendicitis. Too many people had told me I couldnt
do this, shouldnt even try to do this in two weeks. Id show
those jealous bastards. Something bad had possessed me. I just lined
up the same three records Id been listening to, over and over
again, since Id starteda compilation of Fassbinder soundtracks,
Attack of the Killer Surf Guitars and Beethovens Ninththen
kept typing.

Three oclock
Friday afternoon I was done with the first draft. I usually didnt
do more than one. Type it, give it a quick clean-up, turn it in, forget
about it. Things are just easier that way. I didnt see why this
case should be any different, except for the fact that the end result
was 467 pages long. They asked me for 250. I figured wed deal
with it. Id edit it down some over the next couple of days, then
they could publish what was left over in a really tiny font.

When I called my
editor, David, to tell him I was finished, all proud of myself, he seemed
a little incredulous.

"Great,"
he said. "What part did you finish?"

"Nonot
a part. The whole thing. Its done. Its written."

"Oh."

I liked David; but
I could tell that he was thinking that I had done some half-assed job.
Though he knew what I did, he had never worked with me before.

All the while I
was working, I was wondering when the demons were going to show up,
and I got my answer Saturday morning. Id gone into the bathroom
for some reason (quite possibly to piss) when I stepped on something
small. I didnt worry about it until the pain shot through the
bottom of my foot and up my leg. I jerked my foot off the ground, thinking
I had stepped on a still-glowing cigarette ash, when the wasp righted
itself and buzzed away. Fortunately, Morgan stopped by later that afternoon
and killed it for me. Even though the wasp was dead, however, the demons
were there; I had let them in somehow, and they werent ready to
leave yet. That wasp was just a courier.

So over the next
couple days, as I edited my 467-page manuscript down to 464 pages, I
did my best to fight off the bad voices in my head. Inexplicable tears
would well up in my eyes, and I forced myself to choke bad inexplicable
sobs. My guts felt thick and queasy. I stopped sleeping, no matter how
much whiskey and beer I poured into myself, I ate a bowl of cereal in
the morning, and not much after that.

Who knew where it
was coming from? There were a few obvious possibilities. Id been
pushing myself harder than I had in years, running on adrenaline and
cigarettes alone, staying off the beer until two or three, just to keep
my head clear, and now it was done, and I was exhausted. That was the
obvious guess. Which, of course, made it the least likely.

Maybe it had something
to do with the fact that I had taken a decades worth of work and
crammed it into ten days, packaged it up nice and pretty, and was done
with it. It was in heavy, solid form, and now it was time to start all
over again from the beginning.

Or maybe it was
just cabin fever. Or maybe I was dreading the return to my post and
my phones.

Or maybe I just
hadnt gone mad in awhile.

Copyright
Jim Knipfel. Published originally in the NYPress. Illustration by
Russell Christian. All rights reserved.